A review of racing from 10th July and a look ahead to 17th July.

The old adage, if at first you don’t succeed, try and try again finally bore fruit for owner, James Boughey at last week’s Worcester meeting.  Boughey, who has waited 27 years for his first winner was rewarded for his faith when the Nick Mitchell trained Band of Thunder beat champion jockey, Tony McCoy on Chosen Dream by 8 lengths in the novice handicap hurdle.  The success was also a relief to the trainer who had not saddled a winner for 9 months.

A filly who has already had her nose in front at Pitchcroft this summer is Alan King’s Fairyinthewind.  The four year old chestnut followed up her mare’s maiden hurdle victory in April with another impressive performance under Wayne Hutchinson in the handicap hurdle, appreciating the quick summer ground.

Tony McCoy is now well established at the top of Worcester’s leading jockey table and added to his tally with victories aboard the Jonjo O’Neill trained Whistling Senator and Rebecca Curtis’ Scoter Fontaine.  Whilst Scoter Fontaine’s win was not unexpected, O’Neill was surprised and delighted to see Whistling Senator cajoled to win under a masterful ride as he had ‘run a stinker last time and had shown very little at home.’  O’Neill had considered not even running the horse.

We are at the half way point in our summer racing season and the meetings just seem to have flown by.  What a difference a year makes. Currently enjoying a rare heat wave, a year ago the meeting scheduled for this week was lost to a waterlogged track following 9mm of rain falling in just 30 minutes onto already saturated ground on the day of racing.

A different kind of effort is going into producing the ground conditions for this year’s meetings.  Whilst last year we had to deploy pumps around the course to divert the standing water to the basin in the centre, this year the ground staff are watering the course daily, abstracting the water from the River Severn to keep the surface safe for the horses.  It is ironic when you think back just a few months to the winter flooding when river water was really the last thing we wanted on the track.

In a week when a certain royal birth is on everyone’s minds, I am delighted that one of our mares at home has just been confirmed in foal to Malinas.  My husband bought Kicks Milan at the November Fairyhouse sales as a foal and now at the age of six she has had three recent bumper runs for us.  The mare is well bred, a cousin to the useful David Pipe trained Junior, but as we all know breeding is not guaranteed to bring racecourse results and a career as a brood mare now beckons.

Malinas sired Medinas, the six year old winner of the Coral Cup at Cheltenham this year.  If Kicks Milan and Malinas can produce a similar sort of result, it would truly make our day!

Weekly racing at Worcester continues tomorrow evening with the first race at 5.50pm.